SAYREVILLE, N.J.  The Sayreville school district did not violate the rights of a kindergartner it suspended three years ago for threatening to shoot his friends as they played a game during recess, a federal appeals court ruled.

The June 19 ruling by a three-judge panel of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a federal judges decision last year that dismissed a lawsuit filed by the boys parents.

Scot and Cassandra Garrick sued the Middlesex County school district after their son and three other students were suspended following the March 15, 2000, incident in which their child told his friends, Im going to shoot you.

The children were playing at the time, pretending their fingers were guns and saying to one another, I want to shoot you, the Home News Tribune of East Brunswick reported. Their words were overheard by classmates, who told teachers.

The Garricks were the only parents to bring civil action against the district, claiming their sons free-speech and due-process rights had been violated. They sought unspecified damages and asked that the suspension be removed from their sons school record. The child was enrolled in private school following the incident.

Students do not shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate, the court said. But, the panel said, there has to be a balance between the freedom to advocate unpopular and controversial views in the classroom and societys countervailing interest in teaching students the boundaries of socially appropriate behavior.

Fyffe said the four boys were suspended under the districts zero-tolerance policy.

These students were suspended under the school policy that deals with general school behavior, Fyffe told the newspaper. This was not cops and robbers.

Nisha Mohammed, a spokeswoman for the Rutherford Institute, the Virginia-based nonprofit group that is representing the Garricks, said the parents were outraged by the ruling and are determined to appeal.

The groups founder, John Whitehead, said parental notification could become a central issue on appeal since the Garricks were not notified and therefore could not attend the hearing that led to their sons suspension.

This was overreaction and over-punishment, Whitehead said. Its part of the zero-tolerance mentality of no questions asked and you just throw (students) out.

Court records show that school principal Georgia Baumann, who was named in the civil suit, did attempt to contact parents before holding the hearing.

There is no need to delay between the time the notice is given and the time of the hearing, court papers say.

The fact that the boys admitted to the principal that they were playing guns, fulfilled the requirements of due process which can be satisfied in a case like this by informal procedure, the court ruled.

This is a stinky decision. Hysteria of being PC is ridiculous. Quite often people use the phrase "I'm going to shoot" whoever as a way of taking them to task, meaning not literally. Example: Quite often I tell my son that I'm going to shoot him if he doesn't straighten up and fly right, but taking a gun and actually shoot him is not even in my mind.

But it's not up to the court to throw out ludicrous rules. The courts are not legislatures (no matter how much Justice O'Connor acted like a legislator in her rulings today).

Someone said long ago that the Supreme Court needed a rubber stamp labeled "STUPID BUT CONSTITUTIONAL".

The real question is why haven't the school board members responsible for implementing this ridiculous zero tolerance policy been recalled, and why haven't the statutes authorizing such actions been revised?

It's not up to the courts to repair idiotic political decisions that still pass constitutional muster. It's up to the politicians and the people who elected them to fix that.

The problem is that one can't move away from this PC crap. "Zero tolerance" is a curse that the Demoncrap-infested NEA has pushed, and politicians buy into because of percieved "threats" which have been propagandized into the "Merican Pipple" since the mid '80s.

My wife, who happens to work for the justice system, now tells me that overworked District Justices now have to dispense jurisprudence in such inane things as "Smoking Court" (yep, smoke a damn cigarette, go to court) "Fighting Court" (a real good name if I ever saw one, and this is actually for the fighting that DOESNT happen in court) and when all else is left, "Zero Tolerance" court (anything left out of the first two.) Sounds a bit like The Gulag Archipelago doesn't it????

We have become such a wimped out, hand wringing bunch of nothing that these "Zero Tolerance" laws get passed faster and faster, simply because previous "Zero Tolerance" laws have created a condition equivalent to caging wild animals in small cage, and letting them pace aimlessly in circles 24/7 until something snaps, violence occurs, creating an immediate need for further "Zero Tolerance" laws. Self perpetuating insanity, pure and simple, with a real hefty dose of Communism/Leftism/Liberalism mixed in, dosed with heavy amounts of Ritalin, and stirred with the shrill rhetoric of the anti-self defense bunch. Parents are not allowed to discipline their children any more, and the kids damn well know it... parents have been sent to jail for spanking their obstreperous youngster, as a matter of fact, in a lot of this "Zero tolerance" s**t, parents have been sent to jail for the actions of their children, and the children have simply been released, scot free, to do whatever the hell kids do nowadays when the parents aren't around. Great justice Huh?

I wish I knew what the answer was. First, repeal all the "Zero Tolerance" laws and let kids socialize the way they have for all eternity, by interaction with other kids. Those who do sure don't pile up a bunch of inner hostility because they are arbitrarily restrained from harmless activity. Second, the NEA has got to be broken, and broken well, so we don't have the proverbial 800 lb (Demoncratic/Communist/Leftist/Liberal) gorilla basically running all the educational process. Third, we have to restore some legitimacy to parental dicipline, and not make criminals out of parents who have a hard enough time trying to "tame" their youngsters, who have been caged and forbidden enough to make crazed the most docile being.

Can we do this without universal homeschooling, which in today's economic conditions is not really feasable? I don't know, but there has to be a fundamental shift in education, to remove the insidious slide of the last 35 years (note, I set the "watershed" year for the start of the nonsense as '68, which would be basically, the first year Colleges and Universities graduated a "counterculture" class, the year of the 2nd original sin, the GCA'68, and the height of the looting, burning, and insanity which damn near burned the heart out of this Republic. (Note: I feel fortunate that I was able to "witness this from outside, as I spent that particular period of my life serving in the military, and only found out the real truth much later, after my return home).

At any rate, the insanity will simply continue to get worse, unless immediate measures are taken to stop this silly PC crap in the bud. I realize NJ is a liberal infested state, of the first water, but then so is much of the Northeast, and I see no real movement down the sane and correct path as long as the people get their "bread and circuses" (Zero Tolerance). It is just too simple to pass blame off on others when the laws enable same, and most parents just don't give a damn what their kids do, or don't do any more. What is seen coming into the justice system earlier and earlier, proves this point, and the untenability of the hopeless "Zero Tolerance" escalation.

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